ABSTRACT
Incongruity and its resolution have been proposed as essential to humour for centuries, but there is no agreement on exactly what these terms mean. There are at least three main versions of how joke understanding involves these constructs: a puzzling punch line, resolved by cognitive effort; a question in the set-up, answered by the punch line; a final interpretation involving some internal inconsistency. There are related matters, such as backgrounded incongruity, new incongruity in the punch line, partial resolution and flawed logic. All these can be described in an integrated manner using the constructs set out in earlier chapters: internal logic, audience inference, anomaly, cognitive effort and disbelief-suspension. It does not seem to be the case that any of the variants of incongruity-resolution are sufficient for humour, but whether any are necessary for humour is a more open question.
